Gilbert Gottfried

Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried was born on February 28, 1955, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, New York, to Max Gottfried, a hardware store owner, and homemaker Lillian Zimmerman. The family lived above the hardware store that Max and his father operated together. Gottfried grew up in a Jewish household and later moved with his family from Coney Island to Crown Heights and then to Borough Park. He was the younger brother of Karen Gottfried and photographer Arlene Gottfried, who died in 2017.

Gottfried began performing comedy at age fifteen at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village during one of its Hootenanny Night events, encouraged by his sisters Arlene and Karen, who believed his home performances were ready for a public stage. His earliest material centered on impressions of classic actors and celebrities such as Boris Karloff and Humphrey Bogart. Working the local comedy circuit, he developed a reputation among peers as a comedian's comedian before deliberately pushing into more provocative material. In 1980, he was hired as a cast member for the sixth season of Saturday Night Live during a period when the show was being retooled with new staff. Over twelve episodes, he played the recurring character Leo Waxman and performed impressions of David Stockman and Roman Polanski. His on-screen persona during that period differed markedly from his later public image, as he rarely used his trademark shrill voice or squint.

From 1983 to 1984, Gottfried was a regular performer on Alan Thicke's short-lived program Thicke of the Night. In 1986, he made a guest appearance on The Cosby Show in the episode "Say Hello to a Good Buy," which aired January 22, 1987. His portrayal of a loudmouth who inadvertently exposes Bill Cosby's character as a wealthy doctor pretending to be working class was widely seen, and Gottfried subsequently adopted that boisterous persona as a defining element of his performances. In April 1987, he headlined a half-hour special as part of the Cinemax Comedy Experiment series. That same year, he played Sidney Bernstein in Beverly Hills Cop II alongside Eddie Murphy, a fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus, and made his first appearance on The Howard Stern Show, eventually accumulating more than one hundred appearances on the program over the following twenty-five years.

Among his most prominent roles were those he originated in 1990, 1991, and 1992. He was cast as Igor Peabody in Problem Child and Problem Child 2, and went on to reprise the role in the third film and the animated television series, making him the only actor in the Problem Child franchise to appear across all three films and the series. In 1992, he voiced Iago in Disney's Aladdin, a role he reprised in The Return of Jafar, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the accompanying television series, and related media including Kingdom Hearts and House of Mouse. The character was recast to Alan Tudyk for the 2019 remake. Gottfried also voiced Berkeley Beetle in the 1994 animated film Thumbelina and served as host of the Saturday edition of USA Up All Night for its entire run from 1989 to 1998.

His television voice work extended across numerous additional projects. He voiced Digit LeBoid in the PBS Kids series Cyberchase, a role he held until his death in 2022, and provided the voice of Mister Mxyzptlk in Superman: The Animated Series, later reprising that character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Justice League Action, and Lego DC Super-Villains. He voiced Kraang Subprime in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dr. Bender and his son Wendell in The Fairly OddParents. He also voiced the Aflac duck in the insurance company's advertising campaign until he was replaced by Daniel McKeague in 2011. Additional credits included Nick Knack, a recurring criminal character in two episodes of Superboy, for which Gottfried also co-wrote an issue of the comic featuring the character's origin.

In 2000, Gottfried appeared on Broadway in The Rocky Horror Show. In 2004, Comedy Central featured his stand-up material in Shorties Watchin' Shorties. Beginning in 2014, he co-hosted Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast alongside Frank Santopadre, a program devoted to classic films and celebrity interviews with veteran actors, comedians, musicians, and comedy writers, which continued until his death. The 2017 documentary Gilbert examined his life and career.

Gottfried died on April 12, 2022, at the age of sixty-seven.